Kingsblood Royal (Annotated)

Kingsblood Royal (1947) is Sinclair Lewis's bold postwar novel about Neil Kingsblood, a respectable Minnesota bank clerk and veteran whose genealogical curiosity reveals an African American ancestor. When Neil refuses to treat this discovery as shameful, the liberal veneer of his town collapses into ostracism, economic punishment, and violence. Written in Lewis's plainspoken, satiric realism, the ...